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Saturday, August 22, 2015

New Release: In His Arms, and the Orphan Train

By: Peggy L HendersonMy recent
book release, In His Arms (Book 3 in the Blemished Brides Series) deals with
a young woman who is not only facing a physical handicap, but she was also a
rider of the orphan train.

There is so
much history to be found with the Orphan Train movement, which gave me the
creative freedom to come up with my own circumstances for my characters.

The number
of orphans or children of poor and destitute families continued to climb from
early colonial days well into the nineteenth century. Private charities were
established to care for these children, and the New York Orphan Asylum Society
was one of the first private children’s charity, formed in 1806. It required
that children be placed as soon as they received basic education.

By 1854, the
first annual report by the Children’s Aid Society reported that there were at
least 10,000 vagrant children in New York. Publicly funded programs failed to
adequately deal with these orphans, which gave rise to over 100 private
charities between 1850 and 1860. Many of these charities placed these children
into indentured servitude for boys by the age of 12 and girls by the age of 14.
Due to the lack of jobs in the eastern states, charities began sending the
children to rural areas in the west where child labor was needed. This soon
became known as the Orphan Train Movement, a phrase first used in 1854.

These children
could be placed anywhere, with no geographical restrictions. The participating
charities would ask the families who received the children to sign an agreement
that the child would be accepted into the family, but there was generally very
little enforcement or oversight.

Committees
were formed in towns where the orphan trains would stop, and advertisements
would be placed in local newspapers announcing the children. Prospective
families could specify what child they were looking for ahead of time.

The children
were usually placed into two groups - those who were selected for adoption and
those who were not. Selected children went home with their families. The others
got back on the train and rode to the next stop. Siblings were often separated
from each other and, in many cases, never saw each other again.

The orphan
train movement ended in 1929, partly due to labor no longer being needed in the
west, and railroad expansion in the US was finished and most railroads no
longer subsidized the charities for moving the children.

Excerpt from In
His Arms:

“You didn’t
tell me what happened to your leg.”

Grace
glanced down, his words taking her off guard. She shook her head slightly.

“It’s an old
injury,” she stammered. “A wagon wheel ran over my leg when I was younger. It
was never set properly.”

The corners
of Levi’s eyes twitched as they narrowed. He looked unsure, as if he wanted to
say something, but couldn’t bring himself to say any more than was necessary.

When he
finally spoke, it was a low grumble. “I rode the orphan train, too.”

Grace’s eyes
widened, and she stared up at him. The cold air around her vanished. Their eyes
connected and held, as if some invisible string suddenly wound itself around
them, and neither could look away. She shared a connection with this man
through the orphan train?

“How’d you
and your sister end up in Montana Territory?”

He asked his
question before she could open her mouth to find out how he’d ended up in a
remote cabin in the mountains. Grace swallowed back the constricting feeling in
her throat. How much should she tell him? Not that it mattered. She and Rose
were two of so many who had faced a similar plight.

“I only have
vague memories of my life on the streets of New York,” she began. “My family
was too poor to properly care for me and Rose. To bring home food, I was sent
to beg in the streets.” She sniffed, and wiped the back of her hand under her
cold nose, and laughed scornfully. “When a vegetable vendor accidentally ran
over my leg with his cart, my father had thought it a lucky turn of events. He
said that folks would take pity on me, and give me more money.”

“He never
took you to get your leg set by a doctor?” A spark of anger blazed in Levi’s
eyes.

Grace
laughed again. “He would rather spend any money we received on liquor than
getting me seen by a doctor.” She sucked in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly,
letting the mist swirl around her face.

“My mother
died in childbirth, along with my baby brother when I was about ten. Soon
after, Pa left one morning and never came back. I took care of Rose on my own,
until an Alms House picked us up. Years later, we were put on a train and sent
out west.” She shrugged to hide her pain, and gazed off into the distance as
old memories resurfaced.

How would
her life have turned out if she’d stayed in New York? Her hope for a future
there had been just as bleak as it had been on the journey west. No one wanted
a cripple. No one, until Harlan Randall took a look at her during one of the
adoption stops. Why her sister kept getting passed over time and again remained
a mystery, but then again, many of the orphans rode the train for years, with
no hope of finding a family willing to take them in.

4 comments:

Before we moved two years ago, we lived in a town on one of the orphan train stops. There was still one man living who'd been adopted, but he's since died. Several children were adopted at that stop. Some had good lives, some hard, and others a life too horrible to contemplate.

The orphan train may seem cruel by today's standards, but I guess it was better than allowing these children to roam dangerous streets without food or shelter.Your Blemished Brides series is so appealing. Love the cover, too. I wish you continued success and happiness.